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Ferguson


Ferguson

The camera grabs their anger, flings it all over the world to eyes and ears waiting to join the shindig, to benefit from long-distance pain.


Common sense, courtesy, and human kindness are overtaken by cruelty, by vengeance, by a pulsating need to destroy. Burn it down, burn it now.


She remembers the dream, the work, the sweat; the long nights with little rest; she watches them go up in flames to satisfy their animalism.


The alphabet crowd screams their fury, lashes out at any entity except their own despair.  The idiot commentator goes to commercial.


Across town, small children gather to celebrate a birthday, a festival  of life with a Barney theme and alphabet cupcakes with fluffy icing.


Fathers have settled in recliners with beer, letting go of rat-race stress, rejoicing over the four-day weekend, and days of football ahead.


Mothers gather around the children, watching, as they lament the days of cooking to celebrate Thanksgiving, family, and loving togetherness.


And just for a while, they block out the storm, the anger, begging it to retreat, to simmer some more, just for a while, while life endures.

~ Wanda Stricklin Robertson

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